Accelerated Magnetic Resonance Elastography for Brain Stiffness Analysis in Children with Classic Autistic Disorder

项目摘要 该项目包括开发先进的MRI序列来研究大脑硬度， 临床应用这项技术来研究自闭症儿童的大脑健康。目前，每88名儿童中就有1名 美国被诊断为自闭症。自闭症的特征是身体和神经缺陷， 包括局部脑容量的变化。这表明大脑发育可能受到自闭症的影响 并有助于其临床和行为表现。然而，自闭症的因果关系在很大程度上是未知的， 诊断孤独症、评估严重程度和提供康复的定量指标具有挑战性。 对自闭症患者大脑健康的调查有限，因为对微结构的体内评估 在这样的人群中，房产是具有挑战性的。一种技术是磁共振弹性成像（MRE）， 这是第一个非侵入性的，敏感的，可重复的神经成像技术，能够产生机械 用于评估大脑微观结构健康的特性测量。大脑的机械性能受到 神经退行性疾病，最近，脑瘫儿童的全球大脑完整性缺陷已经被 观察MRE措施对大脑健康的细微个体差异很敏感，这与以下因素有关： 认知功能，有氧健身或对干预的反应，因此，脑组织粘弹性， 用MRE测量，可以量化神经组织微结构如何影响社会，语言和 自闭症儿童的发育迟缓然而，自闭症儿童的大脑僵硬从来没有 在体内进行了研究。本研究的目的是使用MRE来研究自闭症儿童的大脑健康 并了解这些大脑的机械特性如何与认知功能， 技能、语言技能和行为。实现这一目标将提供一个诊断框架， 干预这一人群。然而，MRE是一种固有的长时间MRI技术，并且它需要受试者 在很小的空间内静止放置很长一段时间，这使得在 残疾儿童。我们准备实施更快的扫描时间，以优化MRE采集 对自闭症儿童的影响。由于需要随时间在多个方向上捕获组织变形， 是高度时空冗余的，并且可以被建模为用于加速成像的低秩问题。做 为此，我们将设计一种时空数据欠采样技术，称为OSCILLATE， 将通过所有采样时间点的低秩联合图像重建进行重建。一旦成功 这个项目的完成，我们将有量化的大脑机械的差异，在主题与典型的自闭症 为诊断和干预提供依据。我们将建立一个新的协议， 用于研究任何具有非典型神经发育的儿童。我们的团队是在一个无与伦比的 机构位置、研究联系人、MRE技术开发经验和儿科MRE经验 进行这项研究。

Project Summary This project includes both development of advanced MRI sequences to study brain stiffness as well as a clinical application of this technique to study brain health in children with autism. Currently 1 in 88 children in the United States are diagnosed with autism. Autism is characterized by physical and neurological deficits often including changes in regional brain volume. This indicates that brain development may be affected by autism and contributes to its clinical and behavioral expression. However, autism causality is largely unknown making it challenging to diagnose autism, assess severity, and provide quantitative metrics for rehabilitation. Investigation of brain health in people with autism has been limited, as in vivo assessments of microstructural properties are challenging in such a population. One technique is magnetic resonance elastography (MRE), which is the first noninvasive, sensitive, repeatable neuroimaging technique capable of generating mechanical property measurements for assessing brain microstructural health. Brain mechanical properties are affected by neurodegenerative disease, and recently, global brain integrity deficits in children with cerebral palsy have been observed. MRE measures are sensitive to even subtle individual differences in brain health, that relate to cognitive function, aerobic fitness or response to intervention and therefore, brain tissue viscoelasticity, measured with MRE, can quantify how neural tissue microstructure affects the social, linguistic, and developmental delays seen in children with autism. Brain stiffness in children with autism, however, has never been studied in vivo. The objective of this research is to use MRE to study brain health in children with autism and to understand how these brain mechanical properties are related to functional measures such as cognitive skills, linguistic skills, and behavior. Accomplishing this goal will provide a framework for diagnosis and intervention in this population. However, MRE is an inherently long MRI technique, and it requires a subject to lay still for an extended period of time in a small space, which makes it very challenging to perform this scan in children with disabilities. We are prepared to implement faster scan times to optimally tailor our MRE acquisition toward children with autism. Due to the need to capture tissue deformation in multiple directions over time, MRE is highly spatiotemporally redundant, and can be modeled as a low rank problem for accelerated imaging. To do this we will design a spatiotemporal data under-sampling technique, called OSCILLATE, and the k-space data will be reconstructed with a low rank joint image reconstruction across all sampled time points. Upon successful completion of this project we will have quantified brain mechanical differences in subjects with classic autistic disorder to provide basis for diagnosis and intervention. We will have established a novel protocol for faster MRE acquisition for use in studying any child with atypical neurological development. Our team is in an unparalleled position of facilities, research contacts, MRE technical development experience and pediatric MRE experience to carry out this research.